


Lonely... together.

by hereforthehurts



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: (?), Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Comfortember, Comfortember 2020, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attack, Rayla getting the therapy talk she needed, Rayllum, Sickfic, Whump, these kids are so sad and traumatized what the fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27401326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereforthehurts/pseuds/hereforthehurts
Summary: Callum had always wondered why Rayla seems to always be on edge and stays up so late, all the time.And he finally gets to understand why.
Relationships: Callum & Ezran & Rayla (The Dragon Prince), Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 79
Collections: Comfortember 2020





	Lonely... together.

**Author's Note:**

> Comfortember day 4: anxiety. Story set in about season 2-ish <3

Rayla is always on edge, Callum had observed.  
  
He had only known about assassins and hunters through his books and the stories that aunt Amaya had told him and Ezran when she visits the castle. Even then, it was still hard for him to believe those stories. Assassins? People who are trained to hunt and kill? What do they _really_ look like? How do they normally act? Do they feel things? Do they just… fight? All the time? What about their families? Their parents, their children? Are they even human in the first place?  
  
Ezran imagined assassins as big, scary men with devil horns and huge, sharp teeth. Or maybe he was mixing them up with dragons—either way, Harrow wasn’t so pleased when he found out about the drawings and how the boys had been having nightmares after the (false) stories that aunt Amaya had told them.  
  
But turns out, assassins weren’t like that at all.  
  
The assassin he met had regular horns and normal teeth. The assassin he met was a girl, just about his age, who’s supposed to be in school and reading books and making friends—not trying to save the entire elven and human race. She had a pair of pretty, violet eyes and white hair that shines below the moonlight. She _was_ trained to hunt and kill, he supposes—but it doesn’t mean that she didn’t have a heart. Or human (elf?) feelings.  
  
In fact, Rayla was the exact opposite of that.  
  
Rayla _has_ feelings. She laughs and smiles and even joked around, sometimes. She cares and worries for the people she loved—that includes him and Ezran, too, he guesses. She’s just… a normal girl who didn’t get to live a normal life. And Callum had never seen her cry in person, but he had heard her cry in her sleep. He had heard her walk away from their camp in the night so that she wouldn’t wake him and Ezran, so that they couldn’t see her cry.  
  
And Callum wanted to tell her that it was okay so badly. Okay to feel things. To be vulnerable. He just didn’t know how to tell her.  
  
So, they stayed like that.

  
  
  
Until tonight.  
  
They’ve set camp on a small cave for shelter, although it was a relatively calm, clear night. The light breeze picked up, but not strong enough to blow the campfire away like most of the time. Callum was against a rock wall sketching as usual, accompanied with the sound of the fire crackling occasionally. It was nice. Calming. But he’s noticed that Rayla still sits on the other side of the place staring at her knives, foot tapping restlessly.  
  
He wanted to ask if she was okay. Talk to her, maybe. But Ezran cuts his thoughts off by yawning, curling under his spread-out jacket and silently asks him to come over.  
  
“Right,” He sighs, closing his book and slips it inside his bag. “Come on, then. Let’s go to bed.”  
  
He settles Ezran to bed (bed?), the small boy hugging on Bait while the dragon curls on his back. He was supposed to be the bigger spoon, always—but then he saw Rayla getting up from her seat, and he couldn’t help but call for her.  
  
“Rayla? You’re not going to bed?”  
  
She shook her head, giving him a small, reluctant smile. “I’ll uh, catch up later. Going to go get some fresh air outside and… stuff.”  
  
He’s worried about her, but he lets it go. Not everyone wants to talk their feelings out, and he should be able to understand that. Not that he wants to let Rayla be in pain alone. But what else could he have done, anyway?  
  
Nothing. So he stays there, under the covers with Ezran, and slowly drifts off to sleep.  
  
  


  
  
  
When Callum wakes up, Rayla was nowhere to be seen around.  
  
It must have been _hours_ since he first slept off. He could see the crescent moon on the horizon, glowing in the dark night sky. Where is she? Why isn’t she back? Did she run away?  
  
He scrambles up, then curses himself quietly for almost waking his brother up. Lucky for him, Ezran was a deep sleeper—so it was really nothing to worry about. He carefully gets himself out of the tangled mess of limbs (and tail), and walks out of the cave, looking around to find Rayla.  
  
Turns out, she wasn’t that far away from their place.  
  
She was hunching over, pressing her body against her knees when he first found her. Tears were streaming off from her face and hands, but she wasn’t making a sound at all—just trembling silently. It broke his heart, but he didn’t know what to do. Approach her? Try to comfort her, maybe? Would she get angry at him for sneaking around at her most vulnerable moment? Maybe she wanted to be alone. She looks like she wanted to be. He should leave, but yet he couldn’t make himself walk away.  
  
Then Rayla started heaving. Just plain heaving, as if she was about to throw up. That’s when he threw all his thoughts away from his head and ran over to her out of pure concern, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Rayla! Are you okay?”  
  
She jumps from her seat when he spoke up, quite literally—eyes wide and terrified, hands grabbing for her knives in an instant.  
  
“Hey! Hey no, no, it’s just me, Callum, see?” He held his hands up for her to see. “It’s just me, Rayla, it’s okay. Are you… okay?”

She shakes her head, burying her face on her hands instead. “I—” she chokes on her words, failing to get out whatever she was trying to say. “I’m—”  
  
“Shh, it’s okay, um—just deep breaths, okay? You don’t have to explain anything right now. Just breathe.” He instructed quickly, mainly because he was afraid that she was going to choke herself if she attempted to talk any more. “Can you answer with a nod or a shake? Because I’m _really_ worried right now, um. Are you sick? Do you… feel sick?”  
  
Rayla shook her head as she lets out a suppressed sob, shoulders heaving with each one. “I don’t—‘m not—”  
  
“Okay, okay, right—that’s—okay. I was stupid—stop trying to talk. Just breathe. It’s okay.” He rubs on her back, trying to offer as much comfort as he can. It looks like she was having an anxiety attack—Callum had far too many of them back in his days to recognize what was happening right now in a blink. He hated them—the way it strips all control of your body, making you feel helpless and weak and unable to breathe, as if he was drowning—it was something he didn’t want anybody else to go through. But Rayla is going through it, and she’s been having it alone, by herself, with nobody else to comfort her—it saddens him a bit. Even when he was in his lowest, he’s always had Ezran. And Harrow, who cared about his children more than anything else in the world. The way his big, tight hugs had always managed to calm him down, bring him back to control. Maybe that’s what Rayla needed.  
  
“It’s alright, Rayla. Breathe. You’ve got this,” He wraps his arms around her. She could probably cut his limbs with her knife, but he doesn’t care much. All that he wanted was for Rayla to feel the same comfort and reassurance that he had felt when he was in her place.  
  
And to his surprise, Rayla melts into his arms almost immediately, sobbing and gasping for breaths. It made his heart ache, but at least he was doing something to help her. He hoped that it was enough,  
  
It took a while for the sobs to reduce into quiet tears. By then, Rayla was squeezing his arms tightly, her tears soaking into his jacket. “I’m sorry,” she finally spoke up, almost in a whisper. “I—I didn’t mean to let it all out on you like that.”  
  
“No, no, it’s okay,” he quickly shook his head. “I’m—I’m glad, actually. I just… hated seeing you in pain alone every night. I’m relieved I finally could do something to help you.”  
  
She gave him a small smile, this time a genuine one. “Thank you. You’re really… nice, Callum.”

Callum smiles back. “I just… I used to have these kinds of things too, you know. Feeling so overwhelmed and sobbing so hard that my lungs hurt and I lost control of everything.”  
  
Rayla nods absently. “It’s scary,” she whispers.  
  
“Yeah. But my dad, Harrow—he was there for me. With warm, tight hugs in his huge arms, and I just felt so safe, like nothing could ever go wrong as long as I’m in his arms.” He says, feeling his chest tighten in the threat of tears. “I missed him.”  
  
He felt a hand over his, holding it tight, and he realizes that it was Rayla’s. _Rayla, holding his hand._ “My parents… I didn’t really get to know much about them.” She starts, shrugging her shoulder. “I remembered nice things about them, like my mom’s laugh and how my dad would braid my hair like his, but… that was it. When they disappeared, it was Runaan who held me. It was Ethari who taught me how to meditate, and take deep breaths whenever I feel like I’m not in control anymore.” She’s crying again, now, tears falling off from her face and into her lap. “But then Runaan’s gone too, and I couldn’t get back to Ethari, and I just felt so… alone. Like I have nothing else left in this world.” Rayla smiles bitterly at him, wiping at her tears quickly. “I guess we’re not _that_ different from each other, huh?”  
  
Callum squeezes her hand gently. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that,” he shrugs. “I mean, sure, both our original parents died, and now our _other_ parents are gone too, and it also seems like I have nothing else left in this world either, but that’s not really true, isn’t it?” he tells her. “I still have my aunt, who’s far away, but at least she’s still here—she’d come for me in a second if I asked her to. And Ezran, and Zym, and even Bait—and you, you have… _us_.”  
  
Rayla raises her eyebrows, the corner of her lips tugged up in a smile. “Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah!” He exclaims. “And—and even if we _are_ lonely, and that we _really_ have nothing else left in the world like you said… we’d still have each other.” Callum shrugs. “And maybe, you know, we could be lonely… together.”  
  
“Lonely… _together_?”  
  
“Well, it’s better than to be lonely on your own, isn’t it?” He says, and that made her chuckle.  
  
“Yeah,” Rayla shrugs. “Maybe so.”  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr blog!!](https://hereforthehurts.tumblr.com/)


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